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Not even leader Michael Ignatieff survived the historic collapse of his Liberal Party Monday in its traditional stronghold of Toronto.

Squeezed between a Tory blue wave and a NDP orange crush, the Liberals bled seats left and right throughout the GTA.

Ignatieff’s own seat of Etobicoke-Lakeshore fell to Conservative candidate Bernard Trottier, as the NDP strength helped give Stephen Harper his first seats in Toronto.

As the dust settled Monday night, the Conservatives won or were leading in 31 seats, the NDP in 12 and just eight seats for the Liberals in the GTA’s 51 ridings.

Ryerson professor of politics Myer Siemiatycki said the implosion of Liberal support both nationally and in its strongest base, the GTA, left it a marginal and minimal force in Canadian politics.

“This is a disaster for the Liberals,” Siemiatycki said.

Ignatieff didn’t address his own riding loss in his concession speech but touched on the party’s terrible showing.

“Leaders have to be big enough also to accept their historic responsibility for a historic defeat and I do so, that is what leaders are there for,” he said.

High-profile 416 Liberals Joe Volpe and Ken Dryden lost to the Conservatives, while the NDP hoovered up former leadership candidate and provincial cabinet minister Gerard Kennedy’s Pakdale-High Park seat as well as Mario Silva in Davenport and Maria Minna in Beaches-Est York.

In search of a majority, the Conservatives identified a number of ridings around the 905 they thought they could win, and they did, but the results were far better than even they expected.

They won in ridings they had high hopes for with Conservative Chris Alexander defeating Liberal MP Mark Holland in Ajax-Pickering, for instance.

They also scooped up seats throughout the Liberal’s usual feeding ground of Mississauga and Brampton.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford put his “Ford Nation” to the test in this campaign, endorsing Harper at a Brampton rally last week.

That area responded by sending Ruby Dhalla and other Liberals MPs packing in favour of Conservative candidates.

Conservative Julian Fantino, who won Vaughan by a relatively narrow margin in a by-election last year, had no trouble returning to office.

Former Ontario Labour Minister Peter Fonseca, who leaped from Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet table to run for Ignatieff, was in a seesaw battle at deadline with his Conservative opponent in Mississauga East-Cooksville.

NDP Leader Jack Layton had no trouble holding onto his own seat.

NDP MP Olivia Chow, his wife, kept her grip on Trinity-Spadina although there were some accusations of election day shenanigans.

Provincial Liberal Research and Innovation Minister Glen Murray tweeted the riding of Trinity-Spadina, which Olivia Chow won by about 3,500 votes over her Liberal competitor in 2008, saw people voting in large numbers whose address turned out to be the University of Toronto bookstore.

“Thirteen thousand election day votes by unregistered voters in Trinity-Spadina last time — some leases were Loblaws and churches. Happening again,” Murray tweeted. “Let’s catch the fraudsters.”

Chow went on to secure about 54% of the vote, beating Liberal Christine Innes by more than 12,000 votes.

Chow credited the victory to her staff and volunteers, then urged the crowd with a shout of “Let’s party on!”